Natural Selection 2 dev hands control over to community modders

Unknown Worlds Entertainment , the developer behind Alien-tastic asymmetrical shooter Natural Selection 2 , is handing over control to a squad of community modders. Unknown Worlds is a relatively small outfit, and it's moving on to working full-time on Subnautica . A group of 14 community members will “voluntarily dedicate their time and experience” to continuing to update, refine, and upkeep Natural Selection 2.

“[N]ow with Unknown World's blessing, we as a community can forge patch 266,” a news post on the community forums reads. “We can hopefully start to incorporate the best the community has to offer, such as bug fixes and popular features...with many more ideas for the future!”

The cynic in me is a little concerned about the precedent of developers using (presumably) unpaid community members to handle game maintenance after release. That's the cynic, though, and nobody likes that guy. The NS2 community has always been deeply involved in game, which began life as a Half-Life 2 mod, from crowdfunding DLC to donating prize money for the world championship tournaments. It seems a fitting next step for the game—and it's infinitely preferable to the developers abandoning the game when new projects come a-knocking.